ForceDisconnect

Now and then I think back to the days when my love for gaming took off. I spent much of my childhood gaming on the PC, and I loved (almost) every moment of it. Being a PC gamer put you on the bleeding edge of technology. You got the best and hottest releases first, and if you wanted to be where the gaming scene was going, you were a PC gamer, end of story. Even though it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago that this was the case (less than 10 years, for sure), today many PCs have been relegated to primarily internet browsing, work, and social networking, while the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 continue to dominate in game sales figures. What happened? I’ve come up with 5 factors I feel directly contribute or contributed to the current state of affairs.

Years ago, being a PC gamer you were entitled to better versions of games that were more full-featured, with better graphics, better controls (not opinion- if you prefer gamepad over mouse and keyboard, it was an option), and online gameplay. Back when people were lugging around tube televisions and their 42 lb. original Xbox consoles to play 16 player Halo on tiny split-screens, we were rocket jumping, railgun firing, and strafe jumping with more players at higher speeds on higher resolution computer monitors. Hands down, it was a better experience, and no one who had access to decent PC gaming hardware in the day would argue it.

What happened? Why is it that todays PC gamers are seeing shoddy ports of games (*cough* Borderlands *cough*) or games that the only “feature advantage” is keyboard and mouse control with higher resolutions (what’s up Modern Warfare 2)? And who is ultimately responsible for this change in gaming direction?

Contributing Factor #1: The Xbox

In November 2001, Microsoft jumped into the console gaming market with the release of the original Xbox console. At the time of its release, the Xbox was quite a bit more advanced than its competitors, namely Sony’s Playstation 2 and Nintendo’s Gamecube.

Featuring a graphics chipset that was able to produce visuals comparable to some entry level PCs of the time, and being the first console with ethernet built-in, Microsoft had clearly positioned the Xbox in an attempt to woo over the PC gaming hardcore. In addition to this, the Xbox was strongly supported by American game development houses, and offered those that had stuck to the PC for so many years the FPS games and online play that they desired.

The system’s Xbox LIVE internet service also brought with it a level of online integration that wasn’t present at the time in PC games. Rather than using convoluted third party programs to find servers to play games on, the Xbox had implemented a matchmaking system that would track your level of skill and automatically find matches that were best suited to your playing ability. Add that the original Xbox LIVE starter kits all came packed with microphones for communication, and you have an easy to use online experience that didn’t come with the stigmas and stereotypes of PC online gaming (although the headsets did make us all look like a bunch of nerds). This momentum of Xbox LIVE was online further boosted by…

Contributing Factor #2: The Halo 2 Effect

Halo 2 was the title that changed it all for online console gaming. Sure, you can say whether or not you preferred the level design of the original Halo, and you could very easily say that the original Halo game was the first to show us that a decent FPS was possible on a console (no self-respecting PC gamer would ever consider Goldeneye a “decent FPS”… Sorry, fanboys), you could even argue that Halo 2 wasn’t as deep on engaging as the PC’s offerings, such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, or Counter-Strike. If fact, I would go so far as to say that those arguments are all valid and true, but that doesn’t change the fact that Halo 2 hit the Xbox with all the steam it needed to make a serious impact on the face of console gaming forever.

Combining the online play of the Xbox LIVE service with the proven successful gameplay of the original Halo, it was a instant hit. Players were playing online by the millions within a few weeks of launch, and telling their friends of how much fun they were having. No 3rd party connection tools, no high-end PC graphics card requirements, just buy the game, and play it online.

While many PC gamers again turned their nose up at the product, the popular response to the game was staggering. People that previously didn’t get a chance to enjoy online play due to not being able to afford PC gaming components were now able to, and they were loving it. a $400 investment would get you online with an Xbox, voice chat, and Halo 2, with LIVE support for a year.

While not as deep as Quake or Unreal, it was far more accessible, and the lack of depth made it even easier for people to get into and enjoy the title. By this time, broadband was widely available, and with the great gameplay enhancements high speed internet brought to both console and PC gaming, it also added to fuel to a previously existing problem that continues to plague PC developers to this day.

Contributing Factor #3: Piracy

Yar! Ahoy matey, free games ahead.

Whether you feel the the projected costs of software piracy are inflated incorrectly, or are not proportionate, it does not change the fact that piracy exists, and for developers, it is much more of a problem on PC than it is on consoles. Using a recent release as an example, it’s easy to see why a developer would want to focus their efforts on a console as opposed to the desktop computer.

Modern Warfare 2, released in November of 2009, was pirated heavily on the Xbox 360 console- 970,000 copies were downloaded illegally, according to the Wikipedia article. While staggering, the number pales in comparison to the PC figure of 4.1 million. That number is even more shocking when you realize that in its first month on PC, the game only sold 170,000 copies.

Of course, the PC game crowd would argue that this is due to a boycott of the game due to their removing features such as leaning, dedicated servers, or the ability to modify the game’s levels and weapon attributes, but that doesn’t change the fact that by not spending the money for the title, they are showing the developers and publishers that it isn’t worth their time to put the effort into PC titles. Which brings us to #4…

Contributing Factor #4: Developers

As easy as it is to point at pirates and claim that they are solely responsible for the decline of PC gaming sales, this fact isn’t helped by the increasing trend of developers to half-ass their PC game releases.

Take Epic’s Gears of War as an example. While Gears of War on the Xbox 360 was a stunning title that shattered our preconceptions of what console games could look like, when it hit the PC over a year later the game felt clunky, ran poorly, and was plagued with more glitches than the earlier console version had. Rather than feeling like an enhanced version, it felt like Epic had ported the title with no other objective beyond releasing it to turn a quick buck.

Last year’s Borderlands PC release was maligned with bugs, multiplayer connection issues, and various other issues that basically ensured the end user would need to go as far as editing port settings on their PCs, routers, and changing ini files to get the game to run properly at all.

Modern Warfare 2 was an even bigger debacle regarding its PC release. In a blatant slap to the face of every single member of the PC gaming community, Infinity Ward made the decision to remove dedicated servers from the game. Beyond that, they locked down the customizability that made the PC platform more appealing to die-hard FPS fans. No more wide field of vision or tweaked console graphics settings. They effectively ensured that players on the PC were limited to the same feature set as offered on its console counterparts (which is admittedly paltry compared to other games in the genre).

Looking beyond the issue of shoddy ports of currently existing games, the developers are also painting a grim future for PC gaming as well- Mike Capps, president of Epic, has stated that the Unreal 4 engine will specifically target the next generation of consoles, with PC following later.

For developers, coding for consoles, aside from typically making more money, gives the advantage of knowing exactly what hardware the end user is going to be running their software on. This bring us nicely to…

Contributing Factor #5: The PC itself

If you’re a PC gamer and still reading this article, chances are by now that smoke is pouring out of your ears and you are frothing at the mouth as you see that I would ever dare consider the problem to lie within hardware that is clearly superior to that of modern consoles. How dare I imply that the PC itself could be the cause of its own decline!

Truth be told, it is entirely possible that the nearly limitless configuration options allowed by PCs are a contributing factor to the current state of affairs. Yes, you may have an extremely powerful gaming PC, that is capable of running the latest games at unbelievably high resolution on your massive monitor, but the fact is, the vast (and I do mean vast) majority of PC owners do not have the power to even effectively run Gears of War or Street Fighter IV, despite these games running at 60 FPS on their Xbox 360 consoles.

The amount of hardware required to get a PC to perform at an acceptable level is only one part of the issue. Due to the customizable nature of the platform, there are many different video cards, mother boards, network cards, hard drives, and other components out there. It is unlikely you will see two gamers with exactly the same PC rig, and this is a challenge for the developers in the fact that they have no baseline to shoot for when programming games. The developer can only go by market analysis and sales figures to get a feel of what kind of hardware their customers are running, and even then, they still have no assurance regarding the compatibility of their games between different hardware manufacturers.

Regarding the consumer’s side of things, PC gaming is more of a hassle than console gaming. Games usually require an installation to your hard drive, some sort of patching, tweaking, configuring, etc. The features that sell the PC to the diehard PC enthusiasts get in the way of the majority of gamers. Whether it is better to have the customizability or not is an argument in itself, but the average gamer doesn’t want to deal with that. They know if they buy an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 game, it will work in their system, whereas when they buy a PC title they may not know if it will work until they’ve actually installed the game due to potential hardware compatibility issues.

Conclusion

While I could go on and continue to point fingers as to who is ultimately the most responsible for the current state of the PC as a gaming platform (there are many factors that I did not list, by the way), when you put it all together it shows that it isn’t so much one party that is killing the PC, but rather a collective shift from one gaming medium to another. Is the PC doomed? Of course not. Games will always be made for the PC, there are just so many of them out there. PC gamers may just have to get used to be second tier, is all.

As disappointing it is to me personally to see how bad things for PC gaming look to be getting, I realize that things change. I just wish a solution could be found that could bring PC gaming back to the way it used to be, rather than leaving it as the disheveled mess that it currently is. Who knows, maybe the pendulum will soon swing back in the other direction… I for am simply not ready to turn over my mouse and keyboard just yet.